


505

by kate_the_reader



Series: Going Home [4]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Art, Domestic, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, M/M, Mild Angst, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-15 00:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5765170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_the_reader/pseuds/kate_the_reader
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A job apart from Arthur is something simply to be got through. To be endured. The best part is the end, when he can text Arthur and tell him: “Darling, I'll be home soon”. </p><p> </p><p>The title comes from <em>505</em> by Arctic Monkeys:<br/>"I'm going back to 505,<br/>If it's a seven-hour flight or a 45-minute drive"</p>
            </blockquote>





	505

Eames hates taking jobs apart from Arthur. 

Everyone else’s research is just so poor, nothing he couldn't have got himself from a half-hour’s entry-level googling. 

But it isn't that. 

Jobs without Arthur are so boring. Eames likes lots of other people in the dreamshare community, but even the likeable ones are dull now. Compared to Arthur, everyone is dull. When had that happened? He used to find them diverting, enjoy evenings out with them, drinking, telling tall tales, comparing notes — what had worked that one time, where to find the best sushi in Bogotá, that sort of thing (hint: there is no “best sushi” in Bogotá). 

It’s not that either. 

A job apart from Arthur is something simply to be got through. To be endured. The best part is the end, when he can text Arthur and tell him: “Darling, I'll be home soon”. He doesn't call, at these moments. It's too hard, hearing Arthur's voice and knowing there are still hours of travel to be negotiated. Time at the airport, sitting in the lounge waiting for the flight to be called. Boarding, standing in that shuffling queue, waiting while the person ahead of him stows his too-large carry-on in the overhead bin, takes off his jacket, folds it just so … even business class is full of these tediums, when every part of him is screaming, “Arthur, Arthur, Arthur” in an urgent rhythm. 

Eames’s stomach twists with impatience as he listens to the safety announcement, his knee jiggles with tension as the plane taxis (are they headed for a runway or the outer edge of the world?). He bites his lip just to have a distraction as the plane gains speed. That blissful moment as it finally lifts off, which he used to love so much, is now just relief. He’s another step closer to Arthur. 

It's a dangerous addiction, this overwhelming need for Arthur. It hollows out the rest of the world, makes it pale, jittery round the edges, insubstantial, when he's apart from Arthur. Only when he is with Arthur does his presence calm the clamor. 

As the plane reaches cruising height, Eames waves away the offer of a drink, plugs his headphones into his tablet and hunts through his music. What to listen to? Stones? Too old. Arctic Monkeys? Clever, too laddish. He scrolls through the list until he comes to Bach’s _Goldberg Variations_. It’s not his, Arthur must have added it sometime. Perfect. He lets the cascade of notes fill his brain, almost blocking conscious thought. It can't mute his internal chant of “Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur”, but it structures it. He knows why Arthur likes Bach, the music is both precise and dense. Neat, and then almost wild. 

He leans back for a few moments, eyes closed, and lets the music start to wash him clean. Even though he and Arthur are in the same business, he doesn't want to take the job home with him. They will discuss it sometime, compare notes, decide whether to work with these people again, but when he first gets back to Arthur, he doesn't want anything else there. Just the two of them. 

Eventually, he feels a bit calmer, less jittery with need. He opens his eyes, but keeps them resolutely forward. He has no desire to encourage conversation from the businessman in the next seat. Time was, he would have been the one starting the chat, filing away bits of the other person’s manner for creating characters later. He knows he should be observing the world. He simply cannot on a flight like this. He will observe and file another time, when his need for Arthur has been filled by the reality of Arthur and he has space in his mind to spare. 

The cabin attendant comes round again, does he want a drink now? Eames accepts Perrier. Alcohol might dull his agitation, but it will take the edge off later, too. He doesn't want that. 

He opens the painting app on the tablet. He'd been astonished when Arthur had suggested it. His love for oil paints is deep. But he’d given it a try, seen what Hockney saw in it, and used it ever since as a way to keep painting when away from home. 

He considers the saved files. There are two types of picture: Arthur and not-Arthur. Not-Arthur pictures are quick sketches of other things done when Eames is with Arthur. The view from their deck, passers-by seen from their windows, people at their favorite cafes, Silver Lake's reservoir. The Arthur pictures are much more detailed. They are done when Arthur is not there. When Eames is not where Arthur is. Arthur pictures are what Eames does in hotel rooms when he is away from Arthur. On planes as he returns to Arthur. 

He opens the one he’s been working on over the past few days. Arthur is sitting on the deck, cross-legged and straight-backed on a lounger, typing on his laptop. He is in jeans and a T-shirt, his feet are bare. His head is bent. There is a crease of concentration between his eyes. Eames runs his finger down the back of Arthur’s neck, as if he could ease the tension there. He adds texture to his hair. He has portrayed Arthur in one of Eames’s own T-shirts. It’s too big. He has sacrificed defining Arthur’s chest, his shoulders, for fondness. Seeing him in that particular shirt makes Eames's heart clench. 

It's a side to Arthur only Eames is allowed to see. Scruffy, unconcerned with appearance. Eames hopes it is because he has told Arthur — so many times, all the time — how very much he loves him in every mood and state of dress or undress. 

There are other pictures on the tablet he can't open here. A picture of Arthur remembered in bed, lean and naked and warm, the sheets pushed down past his hips. A picture of Arthur smiling up at Eames, eyes lazy, inviting. A picture of him in the shower, turning to look at Eames over his shoulder, the water making shining trails down his arse, his legs. 

Eames loves all the pictures. The ones of Arthur clothed, going about his daily life, their daily life. The ones of Arthur naked, going about their daily life. 

Eames smooths his finger down Arthur's back, adding shading to the shirt, remembering how soft it is, how easy to tug off over Arthur's head. He knows he looks entirely soft, silly even. He doesn’t care. But he shakes himself slightly, and focuses on the view of their backyard, hazy and undefined behind Arthur. 

They have both been surprised how much they care about this yard and what grows in it. Eames's father is proud of his garden in Chiswick, with its almost neon-green Robinia shading a small terrace, borders full of tulips in the spring, poppies in the summer, dark crimson roses against the wall. Eames always liked the garden, as a place to sit on a summer evening, to sneak a smoke behind the half-hedge that screens the vegetable patch. But he never thought he would be interested in what will grow in his own yard. Plants that love the mild LA temperatures, with spiky grey leaves and warm orange or purple flowers. Plants with heavy evening fragrances that border the deck. They take it in turns to surprise the other with new things in the yard. Working in it gives him something else to do when Arthur is away. So he adds a little more color to the yard in the picture, but leaves it hazy, a backdrop that Arthur does not have to fight against. 

The Bach comes to an end. Eames restarts it, unwilling to have any other sounds in his head. He leans back and flexes his shoulders, glances across his neighbor out the window. There's nothing to see, just pale blue sky and clouds. 

He sips his Perrier, gone rather flat, and allows himself to wonder what Arthur might be doing at this moment. It's early in the day at home. Is he still in bed? Unlikely. Arthur doesn’t linger in bed on his own. Is he sitting on the deck, cross-legged on a lounger, sipping his coffee, scrolling through the news on his tablet, looking out across the yard? Has he gone for a run? Is he back from a run, showering? Eames pushes this thought away. 

Most of this current need is just for the fact of Arthur, his presence, but another part of it is for Arthur's body, his warmth around Eames in their bed, in their kitchen, in the shower. He cannot think about that. Not here. Not now. It only makes the chant of "Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur" grow louder. 

Sighing, he looks back down at the picture and feels a smile tugging his mouth at the Arthur he sees there. Typing a research report no doubt. Simple bullet points, everything laid out with extreme, precise clarity. Sections highlighted in color. No room for misunderstanding. Arthur will not have it said his research is anything less than complete. Any team that fails to complete a job on schedule and under budget didn't pay enough attention to Arthur's report. That or someone else did something stupid, Eames thinks fondly. In his mind, Arthur frowns and highlights a passage, bolding it for extra emphasis. He wills Arthur to look up, laughing at himself for his stupidity. 

This picture is finished. If he keeps pushing at it, he will lose it. He closes the app, slipping the tablet into the seat pocket. He will try to sleep. It will be late in the day before he gets back to Arthur in Silver Lake. He doesn't want to be tired. He will want to crawl into bed, but he will not want to sleep. Not for hours. 

The Bach plays on, filling his mind, and sleep tugs at him. For all that their job involves a lot of "sleep", Eames never properly rests when he is away from Arthur. It is only with Arthur's warmth against him, Arthur's weight half on top of him, Arthur's hair in his face, that Eames falls deeply asleep and wakes rested. He is bone weary. 

Without Arthur and his research, the job had gone about as well as expected. Eames wonders why he ever agrees to do jobs without Arthur. Some sentimental sense of loyalty to old colleagues, he supposes. Colleagues from before Arthur, people he knew in Africa. 

He dozes, and visions of Arthur flit through his dreams. Disconnected, hazy, as all dreamsharers' non-Somnacin dreams are. There is no coherence, just out-of-focus snapshots, faded and creased from overuse. Arthur laughing in Eames's parents' Snug at Christmas, pointing to the mistletoe tucked behind a picture frame and climbing into Eames's lap to kiss him. Arthur driving a rental car to Hayes. Arthur hugging his Mom. Arthur eating pumpkin pie and drinking milk, heedless for a moment of a damp white moustache. Arthur at the farmers' market in Silver Lake, considering tomatoes. Some of these images will become Arthur pictures on Eames's tablet, next time he is apart from Arthur. 

(At home in Silver Lake, there are other Arthur pictures. Oils. A series hung along the hallway in their Spanish-style home. They are small square canvases. Close-ups. Each one shows a detail. A long foot, Arthur's shoulder, the nape of his neck, a loosely curled fist, an ear, an eye, like a trail of breadcrumbs. The one that shows Arthur's mouth is not in the hall, but inside their bedroom. Eames doesn't want to share that with dinner guests looking for the bathroom. Eames sketches them quickly as Arthur sleeps or works. They aren't studied. He tries not to overwork them. Arthur pretends to be impatient and roll his eyes when Eames brings out his paints and one of the little canvases that he buys in bulk. But he never moves away till Eames is done. And he smiles a private smile as he walks down the hallway.) 

Eames wakes with crick in his neck a couple of hours later. Still ages to go before he's back with Arthur. He'll be working now. At the dining table. Neither he nor Arthur uses their shared study when they are alone. Arthur claims he can't stand looking at the mess on Eames's desk. Eames can’t bear to look at the neatness of Arthur's desk, practically bare without his laptop. When Arthur goes away, he takes with him the picture he has on his desk. It's one Candy took on her phone of them in Hayes, slumped asleep together on the sagging porch couch. Eames's head is on Arthur's shoulder, Arthur's cheek rests on Eames's hair. Their hands are loosely entangled in Eames's lap. 

Eames doesn’t have a special snapshot that he carries with him. Since Arthur prodded his love of painting back to life in London, he has had pictures of Arthur constantly in his head, on the tablet, in a little notebook (a Moleskine he stole from Arthur's supply), and on the many canvases in the studio in their backyard. 

He pulls the notebook from his jacket's inner pocket. All he can find is a blue ballpoint. He flips to an empty page, past sketch after sketch of Arthur caught in candid moments. These are where the Arthur pictures start. The Arthur who has just been in his head, sitting at the dining table with his laptop, starts to emerge on the page. He is wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Dark trousers. No tie. His collar is open. Eames has remembered that Arthur had a meeting this morning. His jacket is over the back of a chair, his tie snaking across the table. His hair is carefully combed to suit-wearing standard. No curl is visible. Eames's mouth twists in frustration, but he must draw the Arthur he knows is sitting at the table, now he's started on this picture. It's a discipline he enforces upon himself: he must draw Arthur as he knows him to be, not as Eames might wish him to be. Sometimes Arthur is scruffy in jeans and a too-big T-shirt, other times he is as he is now, almost but not quite the public Arthur. 

The Bach has come to an end, but Eames continues in silence, sketching the background of their dining room in quick strokes, the oval marble-topped table, the archway to the kitchen. 

At long last the seatbelt signs blink back on, the captain announces the descent and the urgent rhythm of "Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur" rises to the top of Eames's mind again. Not too much longer now, although the last part of the trip is often the worst. The endless lines of traffic on the freeways making the minutes seem even longer than they are. The small talk the cabdriver will insist on making. Again, Eames wonders when this unwillingness to engage with the not-Arthur world started. He's fine when he's with Arthur, when he is filled up with Arthur from being near him. 

But finally, the cab turns into their street and pulls up at 505. Eames stumbles out, pulling his bag behind him, through the front gate, up the 10 steps to the porch, through the front door. Arthur gets up from the dining table. "You're home," he says, "Oh Eames, you’re home!" And flings himself at Eames. 

Eames drops his bag and braces to take Arthur's weight. "Oh darling," he says, "Oh love, I'm home, I'm finally home." He buries his face in Arthur's neck. "I'm home."


End file.
